This week on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re opening up and talking honestly about our individual journeys to understanding our neurodivergence and how that looks within our creative life.

In the past on the podcast, we’ve touched briefly on the different ways we’re both neurodivergent and what that looks like for us individually. But, today, we decided to dig into this topic a bit deeper and discuss more specifically about our journey to understanding ourselves and how our brains work and how that’s helped with our creative practice.

Our hope for this conversation is that by getting open and honest about our own experiences others may feel encouraged to learn more about this topic and to feel empowered to explore, embrace, and accept themselves as they are - whatever that may look like.

In this episode, we touch on several areas of our combined experiences that fall under the neurodivergent umbrella. They are:

• Autism

• ADHD

• Dyslexia

• Dyspraxia

We also talk about how better understanding the way our brains and bodies work has impacted our creativity, and we touch on both the positive aspects that naturally help with our writing and reading as well as some of the tools we use to help with areas and tasks we find more difficult.

Towards the end, we talk about challenging some of the stories that we tell ourselves and how reframing and telling ourselves a new story - one that isn’t wrapped up in guilt and shame - has been freeing…as has embracing and leaning in to the things that we enjoy and that come naturally.

Next week, we’ll be back again talking about this topic a little further through digging into and unpacking our thoughts on labels and vocabulary.

We hope you enjoy this episode. Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore talks about her experience with learning about dyspraxia and mentions that she’d never even heard the word before two (ish) years ago and that it’s a type of nuerodivergent diagnosis that’s not as well known. Here are some of the resources that she‘s found helpful in her journey:

• Dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk Article “Dyspraxia at a glance”

• YouTube Video "Rewiring Dyspraxia from the Brain | Farah Nanji | TEDxLuxembourgCity”

• YouTube Video “Dyspraxic and Fantastic! | Ellie Madeira | TEDxCCGrammarSchool”

Fable mentions the circle graph or pie-chart representation of autism, rather than as a line. Here are some links to articles that talk about this model:

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-autism-spectrum-disorder/202208/autistic-linear-spectrum-pie-chart-spectrum

• https://themighty.com/topic/autism-spectrum-disorder/autism-spectrum-wheel/

If you’d like to learn more about these topics, here are a few articles and videos to get you started:

• ChildMind.org Article “What Is Neurodiversity? And how can parents support kids who are neurodivergent?”

• MedicalNewsToday.com Article “What to know about autism in girls”

• PsychCentral.com Article “Masking in Autism: The ‘Why’ Matters”

• Ted-Ed Video “What is dyslexia? - Kelli Sandman-Hurley”

• YouTube Video “Autism is a difference, not a disorder | Katie Forbes | TEDxAberdeen”

• YouTube Video “Unmasking the Stigma Behind Autism in Females | Emmy Peach | TEDxUGA”

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)